Typical electronic communications, such as email, text messages, tweets, etc. are on-the-record and their content may be saved in permanent (i.e., durable) storage at multiple server locations. For example, in the case of an email, the email may be saved at an email exchange server maintained by the service provider. Thus, even if the sender and the recipient wish the communication to be deleted or ephemeral in nature, this is not possible. The message usually may always be recovered.
In situations where the participants in a conversation wish the content of certain electronic messages to be maintained as private and ephemeral communications, there are conventional services supporting off-the-record chats. In some such instances, the chat messages are not stored by the service provider hosting the service. The communications are facilitated by the service provider simply by forwarding chat messages back and forth between logged in participants. Because messages are not stored in such off-the-record communications services, an intended recipient must be connected to the service at the time the message is transmitted for the message to be delivered.
Off-the-record communications can be very sensitive and important to those involved. They may be part of a discussion leading to a decision to be made by the participants. Information critical to the decision-making process may be exchanged in a series of back-and-forth communications before a decision is made. Sometimes the back-and-forth may last for a prolonged period. Thus, it can be critical that each participant know about all of the prior communications. Missing a communication can lead to misunderstandings and bad decision making. Alternatively, communications among some but not all of the participants can generate uncertainty and potentially mistrust.
As noted, conventional off-the-record systems and methods require receiving parties to be “online” during the conversation. In the case where a recipient device is not connected, such as due to a plane trip or the like, a critical message might never be received and the intended recipient might never be informed that they missed an off-the-record communication. As far as they would be able to determine, there would have not been any missed communications while the recipient device was off-line.
Conventional systems fail to recognize these significant problems and fail to offer any reasonable solutions. Consequently, such conventional systems are flawed in their operation and usefulness. The deficiencies in such conventional systems and methods are exacerbated because some mechanisms for communication, such as mobile devices (e.g., smart phones) are often offline making the conventional off-the-record communications ineffective and unreliable.
Consequently, there is a need for systems and methods supporting electronic communications with expiring messages that maintain the content of a private message for varying amount of times in order to increase the likelihood that the content is delivered to the desired recipient device, while ensuring that the content is ephemeral and not susceptible to future discovery.